Things to do in London this weekend (October 24-25)

Each year, London Literature Festival aims to bring together readers of all ages to ‘celebrate the power of the written and spoken word’, with a big-name celebrity curator leading the charge. Excitingly, the 2026 edition will have pop star and Service95 Book Club founder Dua Lipa in the hot seat. Her lineup includes a conversation with Zadie Smith about her 2000 novel White Teeth (Oct 24), a sit-down with Sudanese-Canadian singer-songwriter Mustafa to discuss his poetry publication NOUR (Oct 24) and a chat with Patti Smith about her memoir Bread of Angels (Oct 25). 

Jordan Fein’s lavish revival of Sondheim’s subversive fairytale musical Into the Woods spent last year packing out the Bridge and hoovering up Oliviers. Now it’s crossed the river to the Noël Coward with a mostly new cast, and it’s every bit as good. Sondheim and book writer James Lapine throw Cinderella, Jack, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood into the same forest as a childless baker and his wife, and then ask what happens after ‘happily ever after.’ It’s the show’s first West End run since 1991. Kate Fleetwood is back as the Witch and she owns every inch of stage. While, John Dagleish and Laura Pitt-Pulford are new as the Baker and his Wife, and they’re a lovely match. Gracie McGonigal returns as Little Red Riding Hood and is still a joy, full of youthful cockiness, the kind of girl who’d square up to a wolf and fancy her chances. Speaking of which, Matthew Seadon-Young’s Wolf isn’t on stage for long but makes every second count. It’s a wordy, fiddly, nearly three-hour musical about fairytales, and somehow it flies by. 

Poly Styrene, Chrissy Hynde, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Debbie Harry; as part of the city-wide Up Yours! Festival, the Museum of Youth Culture will celebrate the women behind the punk movement with a landmark exhibition. God Save The Queens celebrates the legacy of Poly Styrene, the visionary frontwoman of X-Ray Spex. It will bring together rare and previously unseen artwork, photography, fashion and personal archival material, with highlights including the Poly Styrene Archive, original artworks by radical feminist photographer Linder, previously unseen artwork from X-Ray Spex saxophonist Lora Logic, and archival fashion pieces from the iconic pink-haired designer Dame Zandra Rhodes. 

Carmy’s - a drop-in, spin-off of Islington pizza restaurant Carmela’s - doesn’t just offer fast and breezy service, but a short, impeccable menu of five pizzas that range from simple, unadorned cheese slices to a potent vodka sauce, pepperoni, stracciatella, and a monster ‘loaded pep’ slice that combines almost all of the above. It’s a true feat of culinary engineering, in which a pepperoni slice is dolloped with huge splodges of fresh, creamy stracciatella and smeared with hot maple syrup , yet retains its enviably thin and crispy base. Sogginess? Not even the merest suggestion. Fridges are stocked with cans of dive bar favourite PBR, for the full American experience, and a couple of counter seats inside, though most prefer to stand by the outside tables while scoffing their slices. If a slice isn’t enough, they also sell whole pies. 

Some films are important regardless of their cinematic quality. This new film from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the filmmakers behind Palestinian-Israeli Oscar-winner No Other Land, is one of those. And it’s one of the year’s best. It consists of the testimony of 24 anonymous ex-members of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). The interviews take place in the dark on rooftops in Tel Aviv. These are the men and women who operate the machinery of the Israeli war machine that was unleashed on Gaza and in the Occupied Territories following the atrocious attacks of October 7, 2023. They are anonymous shapes in the dark with quiet reasonable voices. They speak of their initial rage and determination to exact revenge for the Hamas attacks. The ‘Nazas’ are the collateral damage, the innocent men, women and children who have no connection to Hamas or terrorist organisations. NAZA puts together a restrained, intelligent, articulate, precise and utterly damning case against Israel’s actions in Gaza and their ongoing actions through the region. As a work of cinema, it is exemplary. As a work of journalism, it is inarguable. As a document, it is an indictment. 

After a recent spate of pretty weird London Chekhovs, here’s reliable old master of naturalism Ian Rickson with a typically elegant take on the latter play. Although that’s not to say this Cherry Orchard is a bog-standard linen-suits-and-samovars job. Far from it. Adapting playwright Conor McPherson cranks up both the bitter and the sweet as he massages the plot and dialogue for some big laughs. More importantly, there’s an absolutely storming performance from the perennially underestimated Stephen Mangan as Yermolai Lopakhin. A self-made man of humble origins, his relationship with the lofty but impoverished household of Lyubov Ranevska (Kristin Scott Thomas) is the complicated heart of the play. There are some very funny performances. But it’s the more painful emotions that linger in the splendid central turns from Scott Thomas and Mangan, the sense of people too in love with a perfect past to ever truly embrace an imperfect future.

Doc’n Roll Film Festival shines a spotlight on some of the movers and shakers who’ve lit up the music world with intriguing and eclectic sounds via an 18-day programme of music documentaries covering a wealth of genres and scenes. The 13th edition of the festival boasts 21 feature documentaries and five shorts, with screenings often accompanied by Q&As with the musicians and/or filmmakers, and even one or two live performances. Highlights this year include an Opening Night screening of Wolf, Christian Cargill’s portrait of English singer Patrick Wolf, the world premiere of Peven Everett: Voice of a Generation, documenting the Chicago musician’s pioneering impact on house music, and Kevin Wright’s Punk Brighton, documenting the lively punk scene that revolved around legendary Brighton music venue The Vaults in the ’70s and ’80s. There’s something for everyone, basically. Unless you don’t like music, you big weirdo.

The history of the Tower of London goes back a whopping 900 years, which covers a hell of a lot of torture, prisoners and executions – most famously the beheading of Anne Boleyn. It’s no surprise, then, that the landmark is notorious for ghostly sightings. Visit over October half term and follow a spooky trail around the ancient landmark and see if you can spot medieval queens, Roman soldiers, wizards and indeed a ghost bear lurking about the place. Halloween at the Tower is, to be clear, more treat than trick and don’t expect massive jump scares, but rather friendly ghosts and fun themed areas including the Haunted Forge, the Enchanted Wishing Well, and the Raven’s Observatory

Helen Edmundson’s new play Some Woman is described as a thriller, but the experience of watching it is more like a slow strangulation – one that leaves you feeling thoroughly shaken and queasy on the other side. Anne-Marie Duff plays Julie, a downtrodden mother and divorcee, who puts everyone before herself to such a degree her own needs and opinions are barely a footnote in the minds of her family. The Jodie Comer-starring Prima Facie showed us how the British legal system is stacked against women in cases of sexual assault. Edmundson’s play posits that women beyond ‘a certain age’, as they’re so often described, are not only invisible to society, but dangerously vulnerable once they're no longer deemed of value to men. This is feminist theatre that serves justice to its case. 

Every great movie director had to start somewhere. Chloé Zhao first got recognition with her student short film Daughters, Steven Spielberg entered his first local fim fest aged 14 with Escape to Nowhere, Spike Lee broke through with his 1983 master's thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. In the same vein, London Breeze Film Festival exists to give today’s emerging filmmakers a leg up. Across five days, it will show 135 independent films, spanning feature films, short films, documentaries and animation. Different days of the festival will bring different programmes – it will open with a day focused on women in film, followed by a showcase of films made by or featuring people with learning disabilities or autism and, later on, shorts and features that address urgent climate and environmental issues. 

Based on a novel by Daniel Kraus, this bananas-sounding but sweatily effective survival thriller sees Resident Evil and Weapons’ disaster-magnet Austin Abrams facing his most luckless scenario yet: getting interned within the belly of a sperm whale. Replete with flesh-burning digestive juices and oozing gunk, it’s the kind of noxious environment that would put even HP Lovecraft off his dinner. And it’s a 4DX screening that only the truly bold will want to book in for. The blubbery interiors are a claustrophobic hellscape where Jay’s terror is intercut with his desperate efforts to find a way out. An ill-advised visit to the whale’s digestive tract takes the film into realms of full-blown body horror. It’s stressful to be stuck in there with him. Claustrophobics are going to need a bag to breathe into.

Slapstick comedy sensation Starr attempts to perform every single Penguin Classic novel – from Frankenstein to The Grapes of Wrath – over the course of one joyously bonkers 70-minute show. Do not expect to learn that much about English literature. After several West End stints the show returns as part of a season of work from producer Francesca Moody at The Other Palace.

The key to what makes Daniel Bailey’s touring revival of August Wilson’s 1985 play so good is how intimately devastating it is. The sweep of the generational and national tragedy so deftly portrayed by Wilson is always anchored by its impact on one family. At this production’s heart is Ray Fearon as Troy, a fiercely proud Black man whose struggle to support his family and anger at the racism of 1950s America, on the cusp of painful postwar change, becomes destructively entangled with his inability to let go of the past. As he relentlessly builds a fence around his home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is he keeping the world out or trapping his family inside? This revival powerfully evokes the painfully human impact of a country with its boot on the neck of people lost or never given a chance. It’s a play with a scorching emotional landscape.

The thrill of slogging up three flights of steps to the Royal Court’s tiny experimental Upstairs studio is that you never know what you’ll find at the top. Happily, debut playwright Joy Nesbitt’s excellent ancestry drama has a scenario that bites from the get-go and never relaxes its grip. It unfolds in a slave cabin on a cotton plantation in South Carolina, which is now a trendy Airbnb complete with Live Laugh Love poster and a pregnant White superhost Nora who is painfully anxious to welcome Talulah, a young Black Londoner into this devastatingly awkward space. Tallulah is here to commune with her ancestress, Ginnie Good, a slave who birthed eight children in this very cabin. Nesbitt conjures up cringe comedy; morally bankrupt personal drama; cultural satire; pathos and female heroism and hair-raising spiritual connections. It’s a thoughtful, touching, intelligent, funny and disarmingly gentle drama. 

There’s something genuinely heartening about the fact that Tim Key – essentially a weird poet – has become such a big deal, in part (of course) thanks to his appearances in less poetic guise in everything from talk shows to Alan Partridge to Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17. He’s been touring new show Loganberry – follow up to previous hit Mulberry – for a couple of years now and it’s another good ’un, a midlife crisis show dispatched in Key’s inimitable style, prompted by his outrage when Gabby Logan invited him on her podcast about middle age.  

Marking 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States, the Science Museum’s new free exhibition is casting an eye on how science and technology shaped the development of the United States of America. Across the exhibition, you’ll find stories of how Anglo-American colonists, enslaved and free people of African descent, and Indigenous Americans used their knowledge, skills and tools to live, cultivate the land and exert power. Look out for a rare surviving copy of the Declaration, notable items used by King George III and George Washington, and a pioneering map made by Benjamin Franklin, which will be among over a hundred objects on display in an exhibition created with the support of the Library of Congress.

It’s the perfect time of year to explore the grand, gloomy corridors and courtyards of Henry VIII’s haunted palace. Last year, Hampton Court’s Halloween celebrations escaped the walls of Henry VIII’s palace and moved outside, and October half-term 2026 will be similar as its Wilderness area (as it’s now dubbed) returns, offering ‘a bewitching autumnal trail filled with pumpkins, scarecrows, and seasonal surprises’.  

If you love the cinematic brilliance of the sea, the Ocean Film Festival is for you. The touring festival arrives at Union Chapel this autumn and will showcase hours of sublime footage taken above and below the water's surface, spotlighting marine creatures, ocean-related sports, and all sorts of coastal cultures. It’s a chance to meet surfers, paddlers, divers and oceanographers who have dedicated their lives to exploring the wildest and most unknown corners of the planet. This year’s pick of films (which range from six minutes to 48 minutes) includes The Raftsmen, a 1973 documentary about the 12 people who attempted to cross the Pacific Ocean on three handmade wooden rafts; Granny Grommets, a heartwarming short film about OAPs taking on the surf every week and The Kelp Collector, which follows algae enthusiast Sandy Webb on her underwater expeditions. 

Dulwich Picture Gallery’s new exhibition will give visitors a chance to see the complete series of one of the most celebrated image cycles in art history, giving us the chance to see Mount Fuji as Hokusai saw it nearly two centuries ago. Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji brings one of the world’s most iconic print series to London. Created between 1830 and 1833, the exhibition presents, for the first time in the UK, the complete set of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai, Japan’s most celebrated printmaker.

Kew’s Halloween trails – from the producers of Kew Gardens’ beloved Christmas trail – is a souped-up light trail for scare season. We’re promised eerie illuminated trees, ghoulish installations, fire performers and more, with a troupe of actors on hand to stoke up our horrors (in a family-friendly way, of course). Twilight slots are between 6pm and 7.30pm, and things are definitely getting a bit scarier (ie darker). Moonlight slots run after 7.30pm when it should be fully dark.

The so-called ‘king of coloured photography’, William Eggleston made his name photographing roadside diners, suburban streets and domestic spaces across the USA, using dye transfer to bring the images to life. Through his striking, pioneering work, it’s easy to get a sense of the alienation, loneliness and desire that perforated the American Dream of the mid-twentieth century. This major exhibition will mark 50 years since his landmark book Willian Eggleston’s Guide was published, displaying some of his most iconic imagery alongside lesser-known deepcuts, including some taken pre-colour. 

Leave the children at home for this salacious ballet. For the past 40 years, Kenneth’s MacMillan’s three-act masterpiece, adapted from Abbé Prévost’s book ‘L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut’ has entranced audiences and divided critics.
The late choreographer’s ‘Manon’ has bite. A story of questionable morals – or lack thereof – has all the traits for a rich, dense production full of star-struck lovers, manipulative siblings, hedonistic antics, debauched seduction, shame and murder. The duets are beyond sublime, with statuesque lines and holds that will make you gasp for breath. 

Taking place across The Place, Sadler’s Wells, the Barbican and online, the massive annual contemporary dance festival returns to London this October, bringing groundbreaking artists from South Africa, Brazil, Lebanon, Britain and the Netherlands. Spanning live performance, artist talks, film screenings and more, highlights include Dance is Not for Us at the Barbican Pit, a rare UK performance from Lyon-based Lebanese choreographer Omar Rajeh. Legendary British choreographer Akram Khan will be in conversation with Kevin O’Hare, director of The Royal Ballet alongside English National Ballet lead principal Erina Takahashi and first soloist James Streeter. South African dance artist and recipient of the 2026 Venice Biennale Silver Lion Mamela Nyamza will be in town to put on a brand new work at Sadler’s Wells East. Plus much more across the month. 

The American painter Robert Ryman (1930-2019) was a master of minimalism (even though he was reluctant to apply the term to his own work). For decades, he painted his signature white-on-white paintings, urging the viewer to look closely at his brushstrokes in all their tactile glory, and to enjoy the subtlety and nuance of the varied effects he achieved. His works aren't often shown in the UK, and this Barbican exhibition will be their first major airing in over 30 years. There'll be 60 paintings on display spanning his sixty year career, in a contemplative tribute to this influential artist. 

This revival of Jay Presson Allen’s 1989 Truman Capote monologue was initially staged in the stunning House of the Redeemer in New York, the sort of opulent old Manhattan building of your wildest dreams. How would a London transfer work? A huge part of the joy of the London Tru is how designer Paul Farnsworth has transformed the entire Menier space into a faithful recreation of Capote’s New York apartment. Jesse Tyler Ferguson offers a funny, often very poignant channeling of the Alabama-raised author and socialite. That distinctive voice could so easily fall into parody, but Ferguson brings Capote to life, aided by the fact that the play is set at a very painful time in his life. Rob Ashford’s production is very classy indeed. It’s a very enjoyable tribute, beautifully staged.

Best known for his eye-popping, fantastical fashion photography for titles including British Vogue, i-D, W, Vanity Fair and Another Man, British photographer Tim Walker has spent the past five years photographing the nation’s LGBTQ+ trailblazers in preparation for this major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. His first show in London since the V&A’s acclaimed exhibition in 2019, it will be accompanied by a book featuring contributions from Travis Alabanza, Russell T Davies, Shon Faye, Lisa Power and Joelle Taylor.

One of the buzziest late night shows of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Soul Sewage is Sam Eley’s debut hour as Basil Crumbwick – a horny, embittered old man with a papier maché head. Both uncomfortable and hilarious, it’s recreating some of that Fringe magic by being staged about as late as Soho Theatre goes, or at least it is for its initial October run. That’s now sold out, but Eley (and Basil) will be back for another crack at it in January 2027.

London’s art lovers go mad for a bit of French Impressionism, so it’s a little surprising that the capital hasn’t hosted an exhibition on one of its leading figures, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, since the National Gallery’s 2007 show on his landscapes nearly 20 years ago. It’s excellent news, then, that the Trafalgar Square institution will once again be hosting a major exhibition dedicated to the master painter next autumn. Created in partnership with Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Renoir and Love will focus on the most significant and prolific years of the artist’s career, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. Opening in October 2026, it will feature several of Renoir’s most iconic works, including  the 1876 painting Bal au Moulin de la Galette, exhibited for the first time ever in the UK. 

London Month Of The Dead’s annual programme returns this spooky season to get you in the mood for Halloween with a programme of more than 60 fascinatingly macabre events investigating our city’s relationship with death. The line-up offers a plethora of ghostly tours that will take you around crypts, cemeteries, undertakers, execution sites and other eerie locations across the city, alongside talks exploring everything from Victorian child bereavement to anthropodermic leather. Highlights of this year’s programme also include a bat skeleton mounting workshop, a magic shadow show in West Norwood Cemetery, a five hour immersive forensics workshop, a screening of eerie classic The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari with live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne, and creepy Halloween festival A Danse Macabre. It doesn’t get more gothic than that! 

Korean pop culture has won our hearts over the last decade or so, but how much do you know about the country’s history? The British Museum’s new exhibition dedicated to the east Asian country includes sculpture, painting and decorative arts spanning over two millennia from around 300 BC to the present day. The show is a deep dive into Korean creativity, and according to the museum, “presents the most comprehensive chronological survey of Korean visual and material culture seen in Europe for over 40 years”. Look out for National Treasures including ancient gold body ornaments and Buddhist icons, as well as 12th- and 13th-century celadon-glazed stoneware, evocative ink landscapes and contemporary works responding to the turbulence of the 20th century. It’s a collection that’s never been seen in the UK before.